Most of the moms at my school make sure that their 6-year-olds are involved in at least two or three after-school activities--and often four or five: swimming, soccer, tennis, music, martial arts, math, art, chess club, golf, 4H, ice skating, Cub Scouts, Brownies, coding, fencing, archery, knight training, rugby, street-cleaning...just kidding at the end there...
I understand the impulse to provide, provide, provide...all the opportunities possible...give your kid a leg up, feed his/her natural interests, make sure they are up to snuff, make sure they are socially well-adjusted; make sure that they're not cussing you out at the age of fifteen: "Why didn't you let me take ballet when I was three and a half; now it's too late! I hate you!"
I understand the impulse, but...I also see the dangers of overscheduling at this age. My son loves to let his mind wander. He tells me long, elaborate stories about subjects that interest him (penguins, dragons, and dinosaurs, good guys and bad guys). He loves to goof around at home on the computer--we've bought him a couple online computer programming courses for kids and he's tearing through them. I've encouraged him to start private music or art lessons but haven't pushed too hard; maybe in another six months. He's involved in a baseball league two-month training program that's meeting once a week this fall, through October, though he's a reluctant participant at this point so I don't know how long that will last. He reads pretty well, maybe on a 2nd or 3rd grade level, though the amount of time he spends reading at home is far below the time he spends playing internet video games (my husband and I are striving to limit his iPad time to no more than an hour a day). I'm interested in signing him up for either Cub Scouts or 4H, mostly to get him out in nature with kids his age and let him experience certain activities--woodworking, for instance, or rowing--that he's not likely to pick up by hanging out with his mom and dad. I want to take him camping.
But all in good time. For one thing, he's just three weeks into first grade. Time enough for after-school activities in another month or so, after he's really settled into the school routine and the homework routine (so far, no homework, but I believe the teacher said he'll start getting weekly homework assignments at the end of this week).
On the other hand...maybe I should encourage him to pursue a select handful of activities just a little more vigorously, even now...make him work straight through the difficult phases of those activities, the plateaus where progress seems impossible, until he gets to the other side and shines at them. Cheetah moms find ways to get their kids to "work," don't they? To move fast, without making it feel like work--they turn it into play. At least that's my image of the average cheetah mom.
On the other hand--he's six. I'm overthinking this. I've been joking with the "Cheetah Mom" idea--but in that last paragraph I almost took it seriously.
I need to let him dream, to vegetate. One scheduled activity a week is okay.
So much unspoken yet constant pressure in this area (San Francisco Bay Area) to get our kids to "perform" in various ways...to make the grade. And why? What are the brass rings we're offering them? Doctors overwhelmed with bureaucratic paperwork; university professors completely obsessed about getting tenure or keeping up with impossible course loads; software developers working sixteen hours a day to release a product so full of bugs it never sells...I'm sorry but the futility of much of our busywork is only too apparent.
Can we let our children dream and have fun, and not freak out about winning all the time?
I hearby renounce the "Cheetah Mom" title, even as a joke.
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